Question
We are building a EU-wide system that needs to connect with multiple systems. Some of them may be able to reply in an synchronous manner (or near instantaneously) while others in a-synchronous manner.
Would you suggest we use eDelivery for both or only for the latter? What is the delays caused by eDelivery for 'synchronous' delivery?
Author: Georgios PALTOGLOU
Answer
While ebMS 3.0 supports the Two-Way/Sync MEP(Message Exchange Pattern), the e-SENS AS4 profile doesn't support it. This means that the transport and messaging protocol promoted by eDelivery is mainly designed for asynchronous exchange of documents and data.
However, depending on your requirements, you could design a solution where the Two-Way / Push-and-Push MEP is used. This means that the communication is done through two asynchronous calls that are linked together through a correlation identifier. Of course, if your requirements state that every millisecond is important or if the security requirements forbid the receiving of messages in an asynchronous way, then this solution wouldn't fit.
Evaluating the exact delay caused by asynchronous versus synchronous communication depends on a lot of external factors so we would need to have additional input to be able to answer more precisely to this question.
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